Unforeseen Rapture
by HPIsHowIRoll
Summary: One day in a muggle bookstore changes two lives, gives them a new chance at what life took away from them. DHr, Epilogue compliant!


**Since reading DH, I have only seen one [extremely wonderful DHr fanfiction that was epilogue compliant and decided to take a stab at my own. Don't worry, I'm working on my other fics as well. Hope you enjoy!**

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It was the hardest thing she'd ever dealt with, Ron's death. She couldn't focus, she could barely function. She only kept going on for her kids. A year after the accident that took her husband's life, their daughter Rose was in her final year at Hogwarts, ready to graduate and go off into the real world, and Hugo was in his fifth, so close to adulthood it was scary. It made her feel old, like she could never find happiness again because her life was already done. 

With both kids at school she was especially lonely. She tried to find things to fill her time, but one could only read so much, even if they were Hermione Granger-Weasley. When Ron was alive, she had never really needed to work, and when the kids had been born she had quit her job in order to fully focus on her kids. Now, they were away and she had no husband to care for either. It was time to return to work for the first time in seventeen years.

Finding work was easy when you were the top of your class and a war hero, but it wasn't the money that Hermione needed. She wanted something that could occupy not only her time, but her mind as well, and possibly give her some pleasure in a world she no longer felt cared about her. It was for that reason that she decided that working for someone in the magical world just wouldn't work. She would always be revered there, no one would give her any real opportunities unless it was for something she really didn't want to do, like auror work or a ministry job. It was fine for Harry, but regardless of her magical prowess, she had no desire to relive her youth.

So off she went in search of a muggle job. Obviously, money wasn't what she really wanted out of the gig, which was a good thing, since according to the muggle world she had no higher education, thus preventing her from getting jobs that she was qualified for. She did end up finding her dream job, though, at a quiet little bookstore not far from home. The owner was a nice old man who let her take home books to read for free. He also let her read when the shop was slow and brought her coffee in the mornings. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she didn't like it.

For the first time since Ron's death, Hermione actually felt happy. She enjoyed going to work and took pleasure in the muggle books she read by the firelight at night. It was like an escape from the magical world that had taken Ron from her. At least, that was how she felt, reasonable or unreasonable. He had been killed in a freak accident at the ministry that had taken two other lives. The ministry had even attempted to cover it up and make it look like the employees who were killed had been responsible for the catastrophe, had been careless. Just one of the many reasons that Hermione still held onto her mistrust of the ministry that had begun during the Second Great War.

One slow day at the shop Hermione's solace in the muggle world came to an abrupt end. She had just finished sipping her bitter coffee, since Mr. Walters was there, and was reading the first in a funny little series of books, called "Fuzzy Planter and the Wizard's Rock"…

Anyway, she was reading intently when the bell on the door jingled, indicating a customer. She looked up and nearly fainted, and Hermione was definitely not a fainting kind of woman. Standing in front of her looking nearly as shocked was Draco Malfoy, receding hairline and all. It took all she had to regain her composure, for Mr. Walters' sake, of course, and say, "Hello, sir. How may I help you today?"

Mr. Walters was apparently no fool and immediately took his leave, saying that he had some inventory to do in the back. This left Hermione and Draco in an awkward silence that showed no sign of ending in the near future. Draco fixed this problem by striding purposefully into the classics section of the store and perusing the books. Hermione took deep breaths, wondering all the while why on earth Draco Malfoy, pureblood and muggle-hater, would be in a muggle bookstore, even if he was a reformed man in the magical world's eyes.

Apparently, Draco could only look around for so long and finally came back up to the counter with his selection of books. He awkwardly fumbled around in his pockets and to Hermione's surprise, came up with a muggle credit card to pay. He expertly swiped it, showing no signs of this being his first purchase as Hermione had thought may be the case. She had held on the hopes that perhaps whatever evil he was up to had required some sort of muggle torture research… Finally, Draco broke the silence.

"So, er… Grang… or well… Weas… bloody hell woman, I have no idea what to call you without being slapped for one or the other."

"It's still Weasley, Malfoy, but I'm surprised you're showing any concern about my feelings. Of course if you cared all that much, you could have gone the whole distance and called me Hermione." Somehow, her words weren't harsh like he'd expected, but slightly amused, even with the vague reference to her husband's untimely death.

"No, no, that would never do." Draco replied, but had a shadow of a smirk on his face. "We obviously harbored a lot of hate for each other, your husband and myself, but over the years of our work together at the ministry, I loathed him slightly less, and I can even say completely honestly that I am sorry for your loss. I've loved and lost myself, you see."

Well, if they were giving out awards for words least likely to be spoken by a person, Hermione thought they'd be tied between Malfoy offering her his condolences, saying he slightly less than hated Ron, and that he'd actually loved. It could be the apocalypse…

She recovered from her initial shock faster than she'd thought imaginable and said, "Wow, Malfoy… I can't really say which part of that surprises me the most… er… well, I'm sorry that you lost your wife. I didn't know."

"She was a beautiful woman. I didn't deserve her, and that's saying a lot." There was the old Malfoy confidence. It actually made her a little more comfortable, a little less like she was in twilight zone. "She changed me in a lot of ways. I expect you may even be able to stand my presence now."

Hermione actually laughed aloud at this. "Perhaps. I see you've learned to deal with muggle money. Well, you've at least learned to swipe a card."

"The conversions are awful. I prefer to just convert a whole bunch of money, put it in a muggle account, and replace it when the funds are low."

"Why are you in a muggle bookstore anyway, Malfoy?" Hermione finally asked the question she had yearned to have answered since she first saw him. After all, she was a know-it-all, even after all the years that had passed, and it bothered her immensely not to know an answer.

"I knew you'd ask eventually. I'm surprised the pleasantries lasted this long! Actually, it is a little known fact that Clementia's father was muggleborn. He died when she was very young, but her mother raised her to value her heritage. When we started dating, she told me, and I nearly was stupid enough to stop dating her for it… but I was already in love. Anyway, I could never deny her anything she wanted, and she wanted more than anything for me to be accepting of muggles and their culture, so for her, I tried, and I found that my old prejudices were pretty much horse shit, pardon the expression."

"Wow, Malfoy, I wouldn't have thought you were capable…"

"There are a million more things you don't know about me… _Hermione._ Is there any chance you'd like to learn some of them? It's very lonely with Scorpius off at school…"

"Are you, are you hitting on me Malfoy?" Hermione asked, completely flabbergasted.

"No, no, it's not that. I really am lonely! And let's face it, you're just about the only person who can match me in a battle of wits." He flashed that smile again, and for some reason she stopped seeing the boy from school and really looked at the man he'd become.

"Okay," she finally said. "When?"

And that was how it all began, her second chance at happiness that she thought she could never have.

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[**Clementia is the Roman goddess of forgiveness… I thought this was appropriate. I also hope you appreciated my other vague references, I was thoroughly amused by them. :)**


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